Univ. at Buffalo charges pro-life group $650 for free speech

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing a pro-life student group filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the University at Buffalo for charging the group unconstitutional fees in order to exercise its freedom of speech.

University officials charged the group nearly $650 for security officers--one of which spent his time reading a newspaper--because it deemed an abortion debate that the group sponsored “controversial.” The university has no guidelines for such a designation and leaves it to the whim of officials, a practice that the U.S. Supreme Court has found to be unconstitutional in other cases. The university did not assess such fees to a group holding a similar event on campus in the same building at the same time.

“Public universities should encourage, not stifle, the free exchange of ideas,” said Senior Legal Counsel David Hacker. “University officials cannot arbitrarily decide to deem an event ‘controversial’ and then weigh down students with burdensome fees to engage in constitutionally protected free speech.”

UB Students for Life, an officially recognized student organization at the University at Buffalo, reserved space for a debate in April on the topic of abortion. The university required the group to pay for campus security officers at the event because school officials anticipated the event would be “controversial.” At the same time and in the same building as the debate, another campus organization was hosting a debate between a Christian and an atheist; however, the university did not levy security fees for that event.

No major disruptions occurred at the abortion debate, which approximately 225 people attended. The total bill to UB Students for Life was $649.63, about $150 more than the entire amount of funding that UB Students for Life receives from the Student Association each year. The fees will cause UB Students for Life to cancel some of the expressive activities it had planned for this year.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys argue in the lawsuit that the university’s security fee policy and practice violates the First Amendment “because they grant UB officials unbridled discretion to discriminate against speech based on its content or viewpoint” and “provide no narrow, objective, or definite standards to limit the discretion of UB officials in deciding whether to require security at a student organization event.” As the complaint explains, they “create a system in which speech is reviewed without any standards, thus giving students no way to prove that a denial, restriction, or relocation of their speech was based on unconstitutional considerations.”

Attorney Patrick D. Krey is local counsel in the case, UB Students for Life v. Tripathi, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

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ABOUT David Hacker

David J. Hacker serves as senior legal counsel and director of the University Project with Alliance Defending Freedom, where he leads litigation efforts to uphold the constitutionally protected rights of Christian students, faculty, and staff at public universities across the nation. Hacker earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 2004. He also served as an ADF Blackstone Legal Fellowship intern at the Pacific Justice Institute, and is a 2002 Blackstone Fellow. Hacker is a member of the bar in Illinois and California. He is also admitted to practice at the U.S. Supreme Court; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 9th, and 11th Circuits; and numerous federal district courts.